<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>cincinnati clocks by youremynumberone</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27363880">cincinnati clocks</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/youremynumberone/pseuds/youremynumberone'>youremynumberone</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>SEVENTEEN (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M, author gifts birthday girl immortal meanie, the old guard inspired AU</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 16:22:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,574</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27363880</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/youremynumberone/pseuds/youremynumberone</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Who would’ve thought so much of immortality is patience. So much of this life, so much of all living was patience. Jeon Wonwoo waits.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jeon Wonwoo/Kim Mingyu</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>cincinnati clocks</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For Ella.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He waits.</p><p>It is raining in this part of what’s left of Earth, all red and haze. The sky, hollow. The stones in the beach, ordinary and white, like little dinosaur eggs. In front of him, the water is still, save for the ripples from the light downpour. It has been a hundred years and today should be the last of Jeon Wonwoo’s waiting.</p><p>The world is big. It took Wonwoo several years out of the hundred to find his footing back into this exact spot, exactly where he had parted with his comrade, his partner, his best friend, his reason for living the last thousand years and the next hundred more.</p><p>The world is big and his patience even bigger. It rains.</p><p>Jeon Wonwoo waits.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>He never dies.</p><p>It has been too long. Wonwoo has forgotten to count as the world speeds onto a system where numbers slow into symbols, grind into mere shapes and blips. Images morphing into solid, concrete objects, into film reels, into mere projections that dissipate to the touch.</p><p>He has seen it all, is what he knows to be the truth. He has been witness to everything, is what they say about his lot. But Wonwoo knows this isn’t even a quarter of what this life has to offer, not even a fraction of what Wonwoo sees when he tries to hold in his head what he knows of the world, the infinite quality of the universe.</p><p>Because to Jeon Wonwoo, everything he’s seen in the last thousand years, and even the parts he hadn’t, all of it, would pale in comparison to the love of his life. His comrade, his partner. Jeon Wonwoo’s best friend. The reason for his persistence in this life. Again and again. Kim Mingyu. A thousand times over. Mingyu, Mingyu, Mingyu.</p><p>He looks up, looks around.</p><p>The shore is still. Across the freeway, his car sits by its lonesome. The rain slows, steadies.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Left with his own mind, Jeon Wonwoo remembers.</p><p>Remembers Napoleon. The heat of that one summer they spent in apprenticeship in Russia. Wasting afternoons, entire weekends away at the Devil’s Tavern. Paris. Mexico. And then Sao Paolo, 1834. That long decade they spent in the empty flatlands of the Middle East, war raging everywhere, learning multiple languages at once. He remembers how the Arab sun had beaten and bruised him dry, but how it sculpted his partner perfectly. That unbelievable time they found themselves in the islands of Asia, the nation under insurgency. Then they were in the depth of the woods in the North of the country, living with female guerillas, getting drunk on their rice wine. A remarkable memory, Wonwoo thinks, because the women were so brave. Because the woods there were enchanted, the rivers lifelong. Because the guerillas wedded them in their own words, and they had exchanged bullets, which was funny in hindsight as a promise, but was just beautiful and romantic then under the halo of the moon and the shadows the palm trees had casted over their faces, drawing together for a kiss. Athens in 1956, the moon up there, just different. The city there, all calloused hands. And then it was the horrible, painful, impossible year, when he wished it would end, and ah, how selfish, how he had fucked up. How Wonwoo had almost lost him. And then they had to part.</p><p>He had been banished.</p><p>He had to spend his contrition alone for a hundred years.</p><p>And maybe, Mingyu will accept him again. Meet him here.</p><p>Here, in this deserted beach.</p><p>Wonwoo glances at his ancient watch, still carrying the same numbers and measured movements of the only hands he can understand from a hundred years ago.</p><p>There’s about four hours left.</p><p>Rain is the subject of prayer, the kind gesture of saints.</p><p>Four hours to an eternity.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>There was, of course, the possibility of not seeing him ever again.</p><p>He could have forgotten. Ah, Wonwoo could live with that, he supposes. He knows he deserves a fraction of the hurt this will inflict on him. He understands. After all, time: it passes. And with it goes the memories and the past.</p><p>He could have changed his mind. This, Wonwoo thinks, would be tricky to discover. How would he know that he had, indeed, changed his mind? He looks around, desperate for some sign. There has got to be some sign he would leave for him. Or perhaps, he grabs a pack of cigarettes in his coat pocket, completely stale now, saved especially for this moment: the absolute silence and lack of confirmation is part of his punishment, too. He lights the cigarette.</p><p>The rain stops.</p><p>There is another possibility, as well.</p><p>Mingyu could have stopped being immortal.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Wonwoo hissed loudly when the heat of the flame consumed the skin on his palm. And then he watched, transfixed, as the surface of his hand morphed and stitched itself back together, solid and whole.</p><p>He had seen and felt this happen more than he can care to count and yet. And still. He would always touch in awe the skin back to being smooth and unblemished.</p><p>At one point, the entire upper side of his torso was mutilated in a solo rescue gone wrong and he remembered sitting then, terrified in a narrow back alley, feeling his insides tingle in violent sparks as the pain numbed his whole lower body, as blood pooled thickly around his legs. He couldn’t look, don’t want to confirm what he believed then was going to be his end.</p><p>And then his breath hitched when he felt a bone in his rib connect in a faint crackle.</p><p>Ah, Wonwoo sinks back on himself, half-disappointed, half-elated. He lives. Again.</p><p>Jeon Wonwoo begins life again.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>A little longer.</p><p>Who would’ve thought so much of immortality is patience. So much of this life, so much of all living was patience.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>They were gifted with a weekend of holiday before they agreed to come find their leader for the next mission. Before Wonwoo had orchestrated the elaborate, disgusting way their army would fall into the wrong arms. Before everything had gone to ruin.</p><p>Somehow, they had ended up in a dirty, bright red motel in the heat of Thailand. They would spend the day tangled in the small bed, watching movies in a language they don’t understand, and then spend the evenings outdoors. If Wonwoo could bottle a scene to keep forever, it would be Bangkok at night, the smoke from the steaming soup being ladled out into colorful plastic bowls, the stench of the open canals and motorbike smoke, the loud, easy babble of the thick crowd around them as they navigate one alley to the next, laughing, shouting in each other’s ears, <em>Where to, love?</em> Hands woven, bodies pressed together, Wonwoo’s nose resting on Mingyu’s nape as they wait for the street food fare they will try next, or for the beaded anklet they got customized, or for the fortune teller to draw them their cards.</p><p>The Lovers. The Tower. Three of Swords.</p><p>How happy they were.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>In the distance, Wonwoo sees a figure heading his way. Unmistakably. Slowly.</p><p>After the act of contrition, is the act of thanksgiving.</p><p>There he is, he utters, reverent, quiet, as he watches Mingyu take his time in crossing the freeway, to where he is standing on the shore.</p><p>And then, Wonwoo feels his whole body go slack, the whole world stopping in its axis when he realizes what’s taking the man walking toward him so long. No, it’s not that time is playing tricks to him. No, it’s not that time slowed down.</p><p>Mingyu is walking with a cane. His back, stooped.</p><p>He had shed his immortality.</p><p>He is simply human now.</p><p>Mingyu had aged.</p><p>Then it hits him double when he finally sees his face. Wonwoo chuckles a little. Oh, how he had aged beautifully.</p><p>Up close, in front of him, within an arm’s reach, Mingyu is even more breathtaking.</p><p>Wonwoo reaches out, touches a hand to the gathering of silver at the crown of his beloved’s head. </p><p>Sighs lightly.</p><p>“I spent the last several years in quiet hiding too, you know,” Mingyu says, quiet, catching Wonwoo’s hand after it grazed the soft of his jaw. His voice, ancient and brand new. A sound he wants to stretch and braid around himself forever and ever. “I wanted to make sure I would be in one piece, solid enough to meet you today.”</p><p>Wonwoo looks and looks, allows himself to imagine Mingyu, alone and immaculate, all these years, also waiting.</p><p>“Oh, Mingyu,” Wonwoo whispers, a prayer, a litany in a single name.</p><p>“Long time no see, my love,” Mingyu chuckles, falls into his arms.</p><p>A long, forgotten prayer of praise in a language that no longer exists is uttered, fluttering by Wonwoo’s hands, then eyes, then, finally — lips. The deserted beach and its red horizon, it's only witness.</p><p>Though Wonwoo is not so self-important to think everything has led to this, everything, perhaps even the bad parts, if we are being generous, has led to this.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>“Where to, love?”</p><p>The rain is gone and above them, the sun glows all on its own. Wonwoo starts the car, looks at Mingyu beside him, marveling still, at his presence, at this life, and then turns to look at the road in front of them.</p><p>Doesn’t see anything at the end of it except endlessness.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>title is from the song Cincinnati Clocks by Ourselves the Elves.</p><p>big thanks to Kai, for being this story's first reader. I am always grateful.</p><p>some poems I've mangled, paraphrased and tucked into this fic:<br/><a href="https://issabee.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/dear-city-by-conchitina-cruz/">Dear City</a> by Conchitina Cruz<br/><a href="https://www.poetryinternational.org/pi/poem/2678/auto/0/0/Yiannis-Ritsos/Moonlight-Sonata/en/tile">Moonlight Sonata</a> by Yannis Ritsos<br/><a href="https://www.aprweb.org/poems/object-permanence">Object Permanence</a> by Nicole Sealey<br/><a href="https://twitter.com/literarykpop/status/1316047230634090496">Boy in Video Arcade</a> by Larry Levis</p><p>as always, thank you for reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>